Jullien's important book analyzes the notion "to feed one's life" (yang-sheng) as it unfolds in the Zhuangzi. Twelve chapters explore the meaning of "vital nourishment". Jullien demonstrates with clear distinctions how the notion of vital nourishment differs from the Greek appeal to happiness as the telos of human existence.

The preface shows that Jullien is interested in approaching the question of vital nourishment not simply from a scholarly perspective but as guidelines for living. Living as distinct from existing concerns "the hygiene of longevity". Living according to Jullien is "beyond meaning". Rather than emphasize the Western approach that divides vital nourishment into different domains, Jullien attempts to recover vital nourishment as the "wholeness of experience".

Jullien defines feeding life as "the ability to maintain one's capacity to evolve by refining and decanting what is vital in oneself so as to develop that vitality to the full". By retrieving the wisdom of Zhuanghi, Jullien hopes to "give philosophy a fresh start".

Chapter 1 explores the verb "to feed". Feeding is a primordial activity that links us to the earth and to all other things that live. It is a mistake to speak of feeding the soul, as Plato does, because this move veers away from the terrestrial to the celestial. To feed one's life means to feed one's nature. In Jullien's words, "my entire vocation and sole responsibility lie in the care I take to maintain and develop the life potential invested in me". The difference between Zhuanghi and his contemporary Aristotle is profound. Zhuanghi see nourishment as vital whereas Aristotle sees knowledge as what is most important. The nous of the Greeks has not preserved our person. Following the way of rationality to its extreme has ravaged our vitality. It has kept us out of cadence with the music of life. Jullien writes, "the imperative is not to 'save one's soul' but to safeguard one's vitality". A return to Chinese thought may help to revitalize Western philosophy while answering the desire of those interested in well-being, health and longevity" Jullien's book provides a welcome antidote to the self-help propaganda currently seducing "indolent minds". His text is a serious attempt to rescue Chinese philosophy from the current pseudo-philosophy found in bookstore shelves. Jullien shows how the care of the self in terms of vital nourishment is always already economic and ethical. It is very different from the super-store slogan 'Save Money, Live Better".

Chapter 2 examines freedom and change as the ability to "develop my vitality to its full potential". It is not only the body that must be fed, but my life as well. To do so, one needs to be subtle and supple rather than rigid and vulnerable. This language may seem obscure to Western rationalists who have misread Wittgenstein but Jullien shows how the subtle is linked to what is refined and "quintessential". The practice that Zhuanghi recommends needs to be embraced before civilization once again stagnates and withers. China's return to the West in terms of its economic policies show the deep seated hold that rationalism and the pursuit of happiness have on our desire.

The Chinese character Yang is composed of "food" and "sheep". To nourish we must shepherd ourselves rather than allow others to shepherd us. In this context, it would be useful to study Kant's essay 'What is Enlightenment?'

To nourish oneself is to free up "what lags behind in me". For the most part, we tend toward fixation and adherence to models that do not work. We are paralyzed with old traumas that prevent change and growth of the new. Jullien's insistence on nourishment as renewal echoes Kierkegaard's repetition that holds out the promise of the new.

Chapter 3 shows the radicality of vital nourishment. We are not to be interested in merely preserving life but going beyond narrow clinging so that we can be liberated from the hegemony of the perspective that only causes our collapse. Clinging is associated with collapse whereas openness is linked with replenishment. To be preoccupied with preserving life is not to live fully. Think here of Michael Jackson and others who engage in radical plastic surgery only to resemble the corpse they fear. Clinging interferes with joy, "obstructs, and corrupts the very source of vitality". Jullien shows how we must be gracious guests and hosts rather than conquerors who freeze and immobilize others and ourselves. Here the message of the Gospel: "The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it" has interesting parallels to Daoist thought. Of course, Daoism with its emphasis on the impersonal does not contain the incarnation theology of the Gospel. Jullien shows that life "eludes its own grasp" To grasp that which cannot be grasped is futile. Yet millions are spent on the promise of achieving that, which cannot be sold in a box, kit or container.

Chapter 4 shows how finding nourishment from heaven means linking my life "directly to the source of its immanence". Jullien demonstrates how "we take vacations in order to feed life". Heaven is not to be understood in a Western sense as the transcendent. Heaven or Rai in Sanskrit is that which is rich with life. To seek heaven is to return to this life with all its richness. To seek heaven is to unburden ourselves of all that is unnatural. In Jullien's words, heaven is "the full regime of natural processivity".

Chapter 5 explores the difference between Greek on Chinese thought in terms of the question of the soul. In the Phaedo, Plato gave primacy to the soul at the expense of the body. The Tao Te Ching shifts attention to the seat of nutrition (the belly). Chinese thought views the soul as a capacity (de) rather than something immortal. Chinese thought does not contain a detachment from the sensible, as does Greek thought. This is not to say that Zhuanghi does not have a notion of transcendence. There is another horizon that remains non-metaphysical. This is "the other thing" which puts the physical to good use. This other thing can be witnessed at the time of death. It is the thing that makes the body what it is. When it departs, animation goes with it as well.

Chapter 6 looks into the question of the Body in the attempt to move beyond the psychic-somatic distinction of Greek philosophy. The Chinese attitude toward the body is complex. Xing refers to form; Shen to the personal entity and Ti to the constitutive being. To see oneself as a "processive actualization" is to allow life to unfold completely. Jullien argues, "this is why the Chinese have envisaged not salvation through eternal life but rather long life". As Nietzsche has shown, the focus on eternal life de-values this life and this particular body.

Chapter 7 deals with breath-energy and how it can be fed. Life is breath. To feed life is to connect into "cosmic respiration". Jullien shows how energy is waster in the pursuit on things that disperse our energy. Here it is a question of finding one's vocation or the thing that makes us vital, renewed and activated.

Chapter 8 examines the procedures of vital nourishment. These involve learning how to be in contact with things rather than see them. Recall the primacy that Greek philosophy places on sight and light. In contrast, the emphasis on contact allows for a "continuation which allows processes to unfold endlessly". Sight captures, whereas contact "sharpens the faculties". Contact or touch allows for ease rather than resistance. Contact avoids t he harmful effects of realizing final goals and ends.

Chapter 9 explores the hold that the pursuit of happiness has on Western Culture. Feeding one's life "opens up a possibility other than happiness". Aristotle situated happiness as the goal of a well-lived life. Happiness was set forth as "the desirable par excellence". Since desire always desires more, it never desires the happiness to which it aspires. The person is left in a "fixed finality". Chinese thought, on the other hand, emphasizes what Jullien calls "being in phase". This learning to flow and float avoids "getting locked in one position". According to Jullien, being exempt from happiness can open a way into wisdom that sees, the whole world "as a process involving countless transformations that have no end". This not being worn out by life is the "incalculable joy".

Chapter 10 offers an analysis of hygiene and its relation to long life. Jullien shows how Western sinologists mistranslated certain key terms that established a "European ideological and intellectual matrix". Hygiene here refers to the art of managing the feeding of one's life with serenity beyond struggle. The geometric model of the Greeks with its emphasis on just mixture and just measure has resulted in wastelands rather than areas of serene living.

Chapter 11 explores anti-stress. Jullien shows how stress, which began as a technical term in physics, became "a symptomatic cliché". The use of the phrase "be Zen" remains absurd because "access to Zen cannot be the object of any command". Zen cannot be grasped by the categorical "thou shalt". According to Jullien, "Zen can be achieved…only by abandoning the quest and the goal". When this is realized, one can achieve a relaxation that refreshes and liberates. Jullien argues that this relaxation de-stresses and allows us to "remain open to the constant flux of incentives that replenishes the world".

Chapter 12 concludes with a discussion of vital nourishment as a political notion. Utopias are envisioned because of the "tenacious devotion to the idea of happiness" This quest for the no-place forgets the current topos where liberation is possible. To be liberated is to be "beyond the reach of any event, be it traumatic or ecstatic".

Throughout the text, Jullien contrasts happiness with nourishment. He offers nourishment as the "other solution. If we consider the history of Taoism, the notion of nourishment is just as disappointing as the quest for happiness. Consider the time of chaos in the second century CE, when the Han dynasty began to crumble. Many Taoist leaders led wars during this time. In the ninth century, CE Taoist persecuted the Buddhists while the Buddhists responded in a very non-Buddhist manner.

The focus on escaping from old age and finding methods to avoid death is being taken up the new technologists and new age gurus of our time. Is it not evident that conflict is the only thing that has consistently been nourished by human beings? It has become so well nourished, that it alone, in the words of Heraclitus, is the father of all things. The cultural choices of other civilizations whether focused on happiness or nourishment derive from the same conflictual source

Jullien concludes by arguing, "the task of philosophy today… is to reconsider its insistence on meaning... and to ponder 'existence' as a replacement fro the quest for truth". I do not see meaning being separate from existence and the truth that it provides. Jullien calls for philosophy to revise its universal vocation so that it can "re-occupy its traditional terrain… in morality and politics above all". This is an important task. It involves defending philosophy from what passes as philosophy and thinking today.Here the obvious point asserts itself. Zhuanghi wrote his insights in the third century CE. How long will one wait before these insights take hold? How can the Dao be lived when the rules of Mao and others like him still hold sway?

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